Modern businesses are increasingly reliant on APIs. They are the building blocks facilitating data exchange and communication between disparate systems. Because of their prevalence and importance, they are also under attack by actors exploiting vulnerabilities and misconfigurations.
Unauthorized access, data exposure, injection attacks, broken authentication, DoS attacks, shadow or unmanaged APIs, insecure API dependencies, and more present a real risk to APIs and the organizations that use them. As more APIs enter production, the attack surface grows ever larger.
Most organizations are aware of these threats and know they must protect against them. OWASP is doing a great job pinpointing these issues. The problem, however, is that many organizations are confused about which tools to use to solve which problems, leaving them at risk of attack. Much of this confusion surrounds API gateways and API protection. This confusion is understandable. Both tools provide security capabilities for APIs. However, they are not interchangeable: organizations must use API gateways and API protection, not one or the other.
As the name suggests, API gateways are a single, centralized entry point for managing, routing, and optimizing API traffic between clients and backend services. They primarily provide operational and performance-related functions while providing basic security features.
API protection – or API security – refers to a comprehensive set of security capabilities designed to protect APIs from a wide range of security risks, including data breaches, unauthorized access, injection attacks, and abuse.
As noted, although API gateways and API security are distinct tools, they work best when used in tandem. They each perform critical functions for different aspects of good API governance. By using them together, organizations can implement a complete strategy for managing and protecting APIs.
At the business level, API security tools and gateways contribute distinct, but essential functions to an overall API governance program. They ensure optimal API performance and security, meaning businesses can manage their API infrastructure and safeguard against risks.
API gateways centralize API traffic management. They act as a single point of entry for all API calls, offering organizations greater visibility and control over how APIs are consumed across the enterprise so they can ensure these processes align with API governance policies. By using API gateways, organizations ensure that requests are routed between clients and backend services, and handle operational tasks such as load balancing, rate limiting, authentication, and monitoring.
API protection complements these functions by securing APIs across their entire lifecycle, helping to discover unmanaged or shadow APIs that the gateway may not yet manage. These tools also ensure the enforcement of API specifications, setting rules for how APIs are built, secured, and maintained. These capabilities help API governance teams conduct proper versioning, documentation, and security enforcement.
At the security level, API security tools and gateways provide different controls to protect APIs from various threats. API gateways provide basic, traffic-related security, while API security tools address more complex vulnerabilities and attack vectors. Let’s take a deeper look at their respective security capabilities.
As mentioned earlier, API gateways primarily manage the flow of API traffic, but they also include some basic security controls. They include:
API Protection tools, however, build on these functions by focusing on securing the API itself, identifying vulnerabilities, and preventing sophisticated threats. Key security contributions include:
These two tools complement each other because they perform entirely different functions. Using only an API gateway, for example, would leave your organization vulnerable to API abuse and credential stuffing. Using only an API protection tool, however, would leave data unsecured in transit. The same goes for all of the other functions listed above.
The image below shows a comparison of API gateways and API protection.
Proper API management and security require both API gateways and API protection. As we like to say, these solutions are Better Together. Wallarm’s API Attack Surface Management (AASM) greatly integrates with market-leading API gateways to discover all external hosts with their APIs, identify missing WAF/WAAP solutions, and mitigate API leaks. To discover what Wallarm can do for your organization, request a demo or log into our Playground.
The post API Gateways and API Protection: What’s the Difference? appeared first on Wallarm.
*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from Wallarm authored by Tim Erlin. Read the original post at: https://lab.wallarm.com/api-gateways-api-protection-difference/